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Google Play Is Accessible Again in Iran (But Don't Get Too Excited)

Users in Iran can now freely access the Google Play store inside the country after a block was mysteriously lifted on Tuesday.

In August 2013, after the United States eased sanctions on computer technologies against Iran, Google announced that it would make apps available through its store in Iran. But the government blocked access to the Google Play store shortly after.

But on Tuesday, many Iranians began talking on Twitter around 4:30 p.m. local time about the ability to successfully download apps through Google Play (Twitter has been blocked in Iran since 2009, but many have found ways to circumvent the ban). Mashable has independently confirmed that the Google Play website is freely accessible inside the country and users can download applications.

Before Tuesday, when anyone in Iran tried to download apps from the store, he would see an error message like the one below.

It's unclear why the Google Play store is now suddenly available in Iran. Google did not immediately respond to Mashable's requests for comment, and Google Play is not included in the company's transparency report, where it publishes censorship information. Iran, moreover, has a history of unblocking sites without notice — then blocking them again.

In the hours since the first Iranian users reported having access to the store, Google Play has been intermittently inaccessible from a computer inside the country. Different users have reported different behaviors, such as the store not displaying an app's screenshots, or only being able to connect to its website with Firefox, not Google Chrome.

Collin Anderson, an independent Internet researcher who focuses on Iran, said the unblocking is probably a failure of Iran's censorship system, commonly known as the "Filternet."

"The filtering apparatus fails often with different results, as a result of testing, upgrades or errors," Anderson told Mashable. "The Play store was made available by Google nearly a year ago, but blocked due to the amount of circumvention and privacy tools hosted there; this has not changed and the local options have taken off. While there is evidence that the Rouhani administration has loosened some censorship on international news platform, it would be wise to be cautious about whether Play is here to stay."

"It's very soon to say whether Google Play was unblocked by the Iranian government or Google removed the sanction — or if it's a glitch," Gharib told Mashable. "But the important thing is Google Play is accessible in Iran, which lets users install apps directly from a safe source and update their apps for critical security updates" that users in Iran cannot do otherwise.

Dozens of Iranians celebrated the lifting of the block on Tuesday, taking advantage of it by downloading and updating various apps.

If the unblocking wasn't a glitch after all, Anderson said, the government could still prevent users from downloading individual apps, such as circumvention tools, Facebook and Twitter. Some Iranian users said they could indeed view and download the blocked Facebook and Twitter apps in Google Play, but reports were inconsistent.

Topping the list of most popular Google Play apps in Iran is Psiphon, an app that allows users to circumvent Internet censorship, followed by a FIFA World Cup app. The fact that Psiphon is available is a sign that the unblocking might be a glitch; while very popular in the country, it would naturally be one of the first targets for government censors.

Iran employs a relatively sophisticated censorship system to block thousands of websites and major western social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Instagram, however, is accessible in Iran, despite a court order to block it in May. The photo sharing service was also briefly blocked there in late December 2013 for less than a day.

The more tech-savvy Iranians are able to skirt such restrictions with tools like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), proxies or the anonymity software Tor. That's how approximately 4 million Iranians use Facebook each day. The country's leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are also — paradoxically — very active on social media.

This could be the first major western Internet service unblocked after Rouhani's promise to ease Internet censorship after his election in September 2013. However, over the past few months, the opposite has been true; censorship has increased in Iran. Over the past year, the government blocked Google Sites, along with chat services like WeChat and Cryptocat.

At this point, many signs point to this being a glitch. But if the government is making Google Play accessible for good, it could be a sign that Rouhani's government is finally ready to open up to the global Internet.

Mashable
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